The tricky thing about parody movies is that the jokes get old fast and they’re hit-and-miss. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Judd Apatow produced and written spoof of every musical biopic from Ray to Walk the Line, is guilty on both counts. How lucky that when the jokes do hit, they rock. No pun intended. Hit the jump to see why.
Walk Hard chronicles the life of Dewey Cox from childhood in the 1930’s to his ripe old age in the present. As a 14-year old kid, he gets booted from his house by his father who reminds him and us that “The wrong kid died” (Dewey was blamed for the death of his brother), a harsh, yet cruel reminder that Darwinism doesn’t exist. Tagging along with him on his adventure is his 12-year old girlfriend Edith, who churns out babies faster than a jackrabbit and constantly reminds Dewey he is going to fail. To support the ever-growing family and his desire to be a musician he takes a job at an all-black nightclub where he gets noticed and signed by Jewish record executives.
Walk Hard glitters with recycled biopic verisimilitude, from the cars to the clothes to the nagging first wife and especially the music. Written by a team of collaborators, the close to 20 songs jump from early rock ’n’ roll (“Take my ha-ha-hand”) to the Johnny Cash-style anthem of the film’s title and a genius Dylan-esque rune delivered in twanging singsong, in which “mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum,” “fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum/O’ say can you see ’em,” “stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat,” and
The mouse with the overbite explained
how the rabbits were ensnared
’N the skinny scanty sylph trashed the apothecary diplomat
Inside the three-eyed monkey within inches of his toaster-oven life.
Dewey’s Don’t Look Back period takes place in the black-and-white 1960s familiar from D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary and now, of course, the Todd Haynes-Cate Blanchett take on that same period in “I’m Not There.” The director, Jake Kasdan, shifts visual styles, or at least color schemes, as often as Dewey changes outfits. But despite the kaleidoscopic twirling, time traveling and a giddy visit with the Beatles in India, Walk Hard is surprisingly flat. Part of the problem is that it sticks so close to the films that inspired it that it actually echoes some of their flaws. The June Carter-Reese Witherspoon story in Walk the Line was pretty much a drag; the sendup in Walk Hard, which features Jenna Fischer as Darlene, is so accurate that it is too.
The movie occasionally drives a joke deep into the dirt — the endless riffs on Dewey’s last name quickly go from ‘not funny’ to ‘somewhat irritating’ — but Apatow and director Kasdan thankfully keep the film moving, rarely falling into the SNL trap of taking a 30-second gag and lingering around awkwardly for ten minutes. Taking a page from early Zucker-Abrams-Zucker comedies, the scenes and jokes come fast and furious, and the clunkers rarely make much of an impression before they’re blown away by the jokes that actually work.
The key to this movie is the absolute sincerity of the actors: Reilly gives Dewey, who could easily become a cardboard cutout target for unconnected zingers, an endearing sweetness. There’s none of the “tell a joke and make a ham face” acting anywhere in this movie; instead, the completely-straightforward film is acted, shot and experienced no differently than a made-for Oscar movie – just with surreal-ly funny dialogue, like taking the script for Walk the Line and replacing the word “soul” with “giraffe”. All of Apatow’s previous films worked well because they combined incredibly inventive vulgarity with a touching wave of sweetness: Walk Hard isn’t quite as solid as those films, as the sweetness has been replaced with schmaltz. Also, while his previous movies were heavily character-driven (take the two lead characters from Superbad and switch their lines: it doesn’t quite work), Walk Hard‘s characters, like Top Secret‘s or Naked Gun‘s, are vehicles for jokes, not the other way around.
Apatow, Kasdan and Co. clearly have affection for this character, and for this kind of movie. As Reilly said in junkets, ”We treated Dewey Cox as if he really existed.” And it shows. They toss in all the clichés you’d expect, such as the obligatory montage of album covers, newspaper clippings and screaming crowds as Dewey makes his rise up the Billboard charts.
But there’s never any meanness involved. And except for some full-frontal male nudity, which is hilarious for its gratuitousness – and wow, you will not see it coming – there’s really no gross-out humor. That doesn’t mean Walk Hard ever goes easy on you. Like Knocked Up and Superbad, it’ll make you laugh so hard your face will hurt and you might even cough up some phlegm.
Someone who lived and loved as hard as Dewey Cox would appreciate that.